A Fire Fighting We Will Go
A Fire Fighting We Will Go is the 45th episode of King of the Hill. It was first aired on January 12, 1999. The episode was written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, and directed by Cyndi Tang-Loveland. Synopsis In the present day, Hank, Dale, Bill and Boomhauer meet with the Heimlich County fire chief inside an interrogation room. The fire chief warns the men that they are all in serious trouble. As the story unfolds in flashback, Hank, Dale and Boomhauer watch as Heck Dorland drives a fire truck towards the alley. Bill, wearing a fireman’s helmet, hops off the vehicle and proudly exclaims that is now a firefighter. Heck explains to the men that the professional firefighters are on strike because of the red flu, holing out for a raise for health care--leaving the city’s defense in the hands of volunteers. He asks Hank and his friends if they are interested in joining. The three men, in ecstasy, run towards the truck. Later, as Peggy fixes dinner, Hank enters the house wearing a fireman’s helmet. When Luanne excitedly expresses her desire to become a firefighter, Hank insists she isn’t strong enough to carry a large ma n out of a burning building. Peggy disagrees. She demonstrates a "fireperson’s carry," which allows a woman to lift a man’s weight using leverage. However, Peggy hurts herself in the process. Later, Hank and his buddies practice dousing a trash fire using a hose. Dale loses control of the hose and it flails on the ground, dousing his colleagues. Back at the firehouse, the men bask in the clublike atmosphere. There, Heck introduces Hank to an elderly man named Chet Elderson, one of the town’s first volunteer firemen. They are also accompanied by a rather large firefighter named "beef" who's only dialogue is laughing. Chet notices that someone unplugged his neon Alamo beer sign. Dale plugs it back in, but receives an electric shock in the process. One day, Hank and his buddies drive past the middle school, attracting the attention of Bobby and his friends. Joseph Gribble wants his dad to hose him and others off since they're all muddy from playing football, but Hank doesn't want to use the hose for non-fire situations. He changes his mind, however, when Dooley and Clark Peters state that he's not even capable of opening the hydrant because he's only a volunteer. The men decide to clean the boys using the fire hose. Unfortunately, when Hank opens it prematurely before Bill can hook up the hose, the stream of water pins Bill against the firetruck, and Dales' attempt to shut it off strips the bolt on a hydrant, and Boomhauer, in an attempt to fix it, used the jaws of life on the hyrdrant, tearing off the top and producing a geyser of water. As time passes, the men’s behavior at the firehouse turns more and more juvenile. A sleepless Hank protests when Dale and Bill play ping-pong one night. But the pair ignore his pleas for quiet. Angered, Hank rises from his bed, grabs the ping-pong ball, and smashes it with his foot. In retaliation, Bill removes Hank’s eyeglasses and crushes them with his foot. Angered over the crushed ball, Dale throws a hot Frito pie at Hank, but misses and strikes Bill in the face. Hank chases after Bill, who becomes stuck on the fire pole. Later that night, the men receive word of Chet Elderson’s passing while Bill loudly passes gas with his butt hanging down from the fire pole. The funeral turns disastrous when Hank, Bill, Dale and Boomhauer, acting as pall bearers, tumble into the open grave, pulling Elderson's pants off in the process. Afterwards, at the fire station, Dale plugs in Chet’s beloved Alamo beer sign. Hank yanks out the cord, but Dale plugs it back in. Suddenly, the station’s fire alarm sounds. The men are dispatched to a fire at Goobersmooches restaurant. When the foursome arrive at the restaurant, Heck has already extinguished the blaze. But when they return to the station house, they find it engulfed in flames. The men recount for the fire chief what transpired moments before they left for Goobersmooches. In Dale's story, he stats he was testing the fire alarms in the building with cigarette smoke while Bill had his face buried in a french bread pizza, Hank "was giving orders for a change", and Boomhauer was tanning, while Dale secretely switched his tanning lotion with some icy hot Hank bought for Peggy after she injured himself, causing him discomfort, and when the fire alarm went off, Boomhauer knocked over his tanning lamp as he bolted upright, while Dale carelessly tossed his still-lit cigarette onto the floor as he headed to the firetruck. Boomhauer's story states that Dale was actually removing the batteries of the fire alarm so he could smoke without distraction while Hank was scolding him for it. Boomhauer himself was tanning like in Dale's story, reading up on vintage camaros, while Bill was getting his pizza out of the toaster oven, neglecting to turn it off. In Bill's story, however, he states he distinctly remembers turning the toaster oven off. While eating, Dale was testing the fire alarms like in his own story, and after finishing the pizza, Bill had some dessert by toasting marshmallows over the stove fire, but accidentally left the stove on while eating. He then states that after the fire alarm went off and he got bunkered out in his firefighting gear, he saw Dale at the tailhead of the firetruck, switching the labels of the oxygen tanks in back. When questioned by both the fire chief and Hank on why he would switch the tanks, Dale admits that out of the four of them, only Hank knew what he was really doing, and saw that Hank's oxygen tank was running low while his own was full, so he switched his with Hank's to give Hank all the oxygen he'd need to pull him and the others out of any fires. Eventually, the chief concludes that the fire house blaze could have been caused by Dale’s smoking, Boomhauer’s tanning, or Bill’s eating. But Hank reveals it was none of these. He recounts how after he put out Dale's cigarette, unplugged Boomhauer's lamp and turned off the stove, he hopped into the driver’s seat of the fire truck, he saw the Alamo beer sign flashing in the rear view mirror. Not wanting to blame Dale after his selfless act of switching the tanks for him, he instead blames Chet Elderson for plugging in the defective sign, and for accidentally causing the fire. Dale and Bill play along, but Boomhauer says Dale was the one who plugged the sign in, though his typical incomprehensible speech makes the fire chief thinks he agrees with the others, much to his chagrin. The fire chief accepts the story, much to Dale’s relief, deciding the call the fire an electrical fire accident so as not to soil Chet Elderson's name, and the four are free to go. Bill suggests working as plumbers for Mrs. Strockmorten, although Hank declines the offer due to their recent troubles, until Bill mentions that the job comes with all the free beer they can drink. At the insistence of the others, Hank decides he could go for a free beer as the four leave the station. During the end credits, After her back finally healed Peggy began a long series of training then near the end she was able to lift Bobby over her head. Notes *When Dale, Bill and Boomhauer start fighting, Hank falls on top of them but in the next shot he's underneath them. *This episode draws many paralells to The Three Stooges: **The scene where Dale is "swinging the alphabet" comes from the episode "Violence is the word for Curly" in the Three Stooges. **The title is based on that of the Three Stooges Episode "A Plumbing We Will Go". **At one point Hank uses the word "knucklehead" which is often used by Moe in the Three Stooges. **Boomhauer bonks Dale and Bills heads together the way Moe often does in the Three Stooges. **The Three Stooges theme plays at the very end of the episode **The Three Stooges episode "False Alarms" features a similar plot where the characters work as incompetent firefighters. *This was Buddy Ebsen's last role before his death. *Hank's glasses falls off when carrying Chet Elderson's casket, but is back on him after falling into the hole. *The entire episode is based on what is called the "Rashomon effect" where a single event is witnessed by multiple invidivuals who each give differing but plausible accounts based on their own perspective. * During Boomhauer's version of how they left the fire station, everybody talks like Boomhauer except Boomhauer who speaks normally. * During Bill's version, Bill was even more fat and bald than he was in real life. * During Dale's story, Dale was shown with incredibly long hair when Hank was seen '' giving orders for a change''. * Chet Elderson mentioned the explosion of the Mega Lo Mart incident in the season 2 finale "Propane Boom", and asked Hank if he was "The idiot who blew up the Mega Lo Mart". The "idiot who blew up the Mega Lo Mart" was really Buckley, who caused a Propane gas leak, by dragging a Propane tank by the valve, which Hank told him not to, for obvious reasons Stinger Quote Dale: Bickie-bie-be-oh-bo-bickie-bie-bo! Category:Episodes Category:Season 3